On Tuesday October 1, the Upper School Garden Club hosted the annual Honey Harvest. All divisions were in attendance, with the room being packed during all four sessions of the event. As usual, there was a lesson about the life cycle and importance of bees by the school’s beekeeper, Eric, followed by a demonstration of how to extract the honey from the hive. Many students got a chance to scrape off the wax that caps the hexagonal wells in which honey is stored, and some even got to spin the centrifuge which removed and collects the honey. Plenty of honey was left for the bees to ensure that they could survive the winter, but the excess amounted to about 60 lbs!
All attendees got a chance to taste this fall’s product, as well as the honey that had been extracted last spring. Spring honey is lighter in color and has a different taste due to the bees taking pollen from different flowers, so the tasting was itself yet another lesson. The Garden Club looks forward to hosting this event again next year, in addition to a beeswax candle-making workshop next spring, assuming the on-campus hives produce enough wax for such an event. Thank you to all who attended!
